Readers' comments

A very easy book, unfortunately.
It is not just a Nigerian thing, but that's been exhausted.
There are many variations to this crime these days and it would have been good if the book (or the reviewer could realise that the book could) further explore these variations and the trending types and forms that 419 is turning to. A particular one I get inundated with is of a mail purportedly from a young beautiful female trying to chat up an old (and/ or lonely) respondent who develops a "deep emotional relationship" that eventually gives way to the respondent sending money for vagaries of reasons after receiving (sometimes explicit) pictures of the purported sender....

The only omission from this much-publicized book (surprise, surprise!) also happens to be the most important fact about the crime: that with very few regrettable exceptions, the so-called "victims" are invariably people intent on participating in what they wrongly believed to be a multi-million-dollar criminal enterprise aimed at the Nigerian people - individuals that would be prosecuted for criminal conspiracy (at least) in most societies.

Which is why it is ever so idiotic of our rulers when they waste their time (and our scarce resources) warning foreigners against these scams. And quite hypocritical too, given that more often than not, the scams themselves are based on actual events within government departments, including the ones responsible for the ludicrous warnings.

If memory serves, it's the Secret Service that has the responsibility for investigating 419 crimes in the US. But there's a split between the agents who balk at helping people ("victims") who are, effectively, co-conspirators, and the agents who see the initiators of the crime as criminals deserving of prosecution. It's an interesting dilemma.

Alas, I have no knowledge of the way crimes are investigated or prosecuted in America, so my comments would be rather unhelpful in that regard.

Nonetheless, if you're right, it's certainly an interesting thought, because if I, as a non-American, attempted to steal money from Americans, I'd quite rightly be prosecuted, even if I happened to be a "victim" of a 419-type scam. I certainly can't imagine them wrestling with any dilemma at all. But then, what aspect of American policy towards foreigners isn't rooted in such double standards?

The problem is that nothing is ever too good to be true in Nigeria. Indeed, one of the reasons why the scams are so successful is because they often mirror "genuine" ones. The Lebanese and Indian communities based in the country are notorious as favoured fixers of all manner of fraudulent transactions.